The restaurant's owner, Pavel Karlik, said the attacker had walked in to the property and started firing a handgun.

"I immediately ran out through the back door, along with other guests who then called an ambulance and police," he said.

The gunman had called a national television station before he started the attack.

Pavel Lebduska, head of regional broadcasting at the Prima channel, said the man had claimed "he was being bullied, no public institutions would help him, and that he had a gun and hostages and that he would deal with it his own way".

Mr Lebduska said the caller had given his name but the station would not reveal it for the time being. The station alerted the police immediately.

Mr Chovanec said on Twitter: "According to the available information, this was not a terrorist attack, but one carried out by an unbalanced individual."

Uhersky Brod is a town of 17,000 in the Moravia region, near the border with Slovakia.

Such shootings are rare in the country, says the BBC's Rob Cameron in Prague, but with hunting a popular hobby many people in rural areas own weapons.